Are you experiencing Fretime spikes, or is this just a sign of paranoia?
Are you experiencing Fretime spikes, or is this just a sign of paranoia?
Hey everyone,
I'm feeling pretty down right now. It's been a tough stretch over the past few weeks, and I'm not sure what to do next. But let me walk you through what happened:
It all began with Egosoft's X4, which would occasionally stutter. At first, I thought it was just a minor hiccup—nothing to worry about. But then it kept happening, and I started checking the settings. Nothing changed. Eventually, I gave up and kept seeing those stutters.
Next, I tried playing "Suicide Squad - Kill the Justice League." It was a real struggle—sometimes it would freeze, other times it worked fine. Until I reached the city, and then: boom! The same issues popped up again. Raytracing on, off, DLSS active, resolution dropping, and everything fluctuating. I could tweak some settings to reduce the spikes, but they still showed up occasionally.
Then I switched to "Guardians of the Galaxy" and... well, I saw it there too, though not often. I also played Doom Eternal on Ultra, which had similar problems—spikes during fights. My eye caught them, and they appeared in games like "Pacific Drive," "Elite Dangerous," "Warframe," and even in the Furmark and 3D Mark stress tests (the last version was called “Nomad”).
Here are my specs:
- AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D 8-core at 4.20 GHz
- MSI MAG B650 Tomahawk WiFi, AMD B650
- RAM G.Skill Flare X5, DDR5-6000, CL32, AMD EXPO - 32 GB dual
- Graphics ASUS GeForce RTX 4090 TUF O24G, 24576 MB GDDR6X
- NVMe Lexar NM790 NVMe SSD, PCIe 4.0 M.2 type 2280 - 4 TB
- Power supply: Quiet Power 12, 80 PLUS Platinum, ATX 3.0, PCIe 5.0 - 1000W
- Operating System: Windows 11
Monitors:
- Aorus FV43U (Main, 144 Hz, DisplayPort, HDR off, Freesync off)
- LG IPS FullHD (HDMI, 60 Hz)
All components are water cooled, and temperatures stay stable up to 75°C for the GPU.
What I did:
- Turned off unnecessary programs (especially MSI Center)
- Disabled extra devices
- Turned off internal GPU and sound
- Installed on C or D drive (with over 1 TB free space)
- Enabled compatibility mode
- Ran only one monitor (second one unplugged)
- Checked temperatures—everything was normal at 60°C max GPU
- Set mouse polling to 500
- In-game: DLSS, ray tracing, VSynch disabled; frame rate limited to 60, 100, 143 FPS
- NVidi settings: GSync off
- Energy saving plan: High performance
- Updated graphics card and chipset drivers
- BIOS update (settings were screenshoted before) – no reset after
- Activated BIOS Expo, Rebar, Rebar disabled
- Disabled fTPM and RGB Control
- Set energy saving plan to Processor energy management: Min to 100%, all on "Ultimate"
- Disabled Hardware Accelerated GPU Scheduling in Windows
I'm running low on battery and feeling really frustrated. This has been going on for weeks, and I'm at the end of it.
Thanks for any ideas anyone might have.
🙁
Hello! I've been dealing with the same problem since July, involving two nearly identical builds. It seems to be the exact same issue you're facing: occasional, unpredictable frame rate drops that happen randomly—sometimes hours, sometimes minutes. These spikes aren't related to loading shaders, assets, or optimization issues. I assume you could remain still in a nearly static menu and still encounter these problems. (I've tested various BIOS, GPU drivers, and chipset drivers.)
PC Specifications 1:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600X
GPU: RTX 4070 Super EVO DUAL Asus
RAM: 2x16 GB Corsair Vengeance 6000 MHz
Motherboard: MSI X670E Gaming Plus Wifi
SSD: NVMe 1 TB WD_Black SN770
PSU: NZXT C750 Gold
PC Specifications 2:
CPU: Ryzen 5 7600
GPU: RTX 4060 MSI 2X VENTUS
RAM: 2x16 GB Corsair Vengeance 6000 MHz
Motherboard: MSI B650M Gaming Plus Wifi
SSD: NVMe 1 TB Crucial P3 Plus
PSU: XTR 550W Gold
I've tried almost everything you've suggested, except for Steam, Discord, and Chrome. I'm confident it's connected to AM5 or MSI hardware, not a general issue. Are you still working on resolving this, or did you manage to fix it? This was my first time noticing it around early July, roughly the 11th. I have no clue what might be triggering these microstutters. Using monitoring tools like PresentMon or RivaTuner has helped me understand that without them, these spikes cause a noticeable drop in Steam's built-in FPS counter—usually by 2 to 3 digits, depending on the frame rate. And if a game induces coil whine, it pauses for a split second right when those microstutters occur.
Hi!
Apologies for the delayed response, but I had a lot on my plate and was really focused on finding the fix, so I forgot to reply.
Currently, I don’t have a clear answer and I’m feeling quite sensitive. These frame drops do occur; they get worse with higher monitor frequencies. The GPU load is around 70%, CPU at 60%, temperatures are stable thanks to water cooling (about 70°C), while the CPU stays cooler. The graphics card memory usage is between 8–10 GB.
I turned off all unnecessary processes, disabled fTPM and RGB settings, experimented with Windows energy options, and cleaned up drivers using DDU before reinstalling them.
I’m just exhausted and think this might be normal for me. There seems to be no real solution, and most people probably don’t notice or care about it.
Sorry I can’t offer more help.
Hi! Thanks for the update. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to resolve it—I believe its strength dropped significantly when ReBar was disabled. Regardless, it seems there’s nothing that can be done about it. Testing with two different systems didn’t show any expected performance loss, which is quite unusual.